Growing up in Clermont, Kayden Harmony Greenstein was fascinated by television and the people behind the scenes.

She was also captivated by how people think, communicate and make decisions. Watching the O.J. Simpson trial sparked dreams of becoming a jury consultant.

At South Lake High School, she studied speech and debate, she won The Great Debate twice and earned a national championship.

From there, her interests started to grow.

“I always knew I wanted to make movies,” she says. “But I was really interested in people.”

That curiosity eventually led Kayden to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.

“Coming from a community with few opportunities to study filmmaking, I was determined to absorb everything I could, so I took every film class available,” she says.

It didn’t take long for her to realize something wasn’t clicking.

“Film production is such a slow, arduous process and I just wanted to create,” Kayden says.

Everything changed during the university’s final add/drop period when she enrolled in renowned television producer JD Roth’s Game Show class.

With little time to prepare, Kayden recruited classmates she barely knew, produced a sizzle reel and pitched a dating show called “Campus Crush.”

The project won the class vote and was selected for production, with Kayden-Harmony serving as executive producer.

“That class changed my life,” she says.

More importantly, it introduced her to unscripted television.

“I love the fast pace of unscripted TV,” she says. “I love the structure of competition. I love creating entertainment through story.”

Through that experience, she became one of the youngest assistant general managers in Trojan Vision history while serving as Roth’s undergraduate teaching assistant for his Game Show and television pitching courses. She also developed pitches and sizzle reels while gaining experience on projects for major studios and networks.

Working alongside industry professionals only strengthened her ambition.

“I wanted their job,” she says. “I wanted to be in charge of production.”

That determination led to another milestone when she was selected as one of just 40 college students nationwide for the Television Academy Foundation Summer Internship Program.

She is now spending the summer at Walt Disney Television, fulfilling a promise she had written to herself earlier this year.

The internship is giving her a closer look at the kind of unscripted television she hopes to create.

“There are creators out there who don’t care,” she says. “For me, when I create, I’m invested.”

“I have never been satisfied with allowing dreams to remain dreams.”

She believes the best unscripted television isn’t simply about competition or dating. It’s about transformation.

“My goal is to leave people better off than how I found them,” she says.

Kayden plans to build a career developing unscripted television, creating stories that reflect diverse experiences while mentoring future creators entering the industry.

“Society has always needed storytellers. I cannot wait to spend my life becoming one,” she says. “And, somewhere along the way, I’d love to finally write the comic books I’ve been imagining since I was a kid.”

Photos: Provided